Moving Providers

A plan for mice and men

The goals

Why are you moving marketplace providers? Why are you considering it? It's not easy to change the tyres on a moving vehicle, but can you afford to stop everything for a few weeks while you transition? Is it worth it? Is there a way to minimize downtime?

Many more providers switch due to service issues. Price is surprisingly secondary. This implies you are moving usually due to a lack of perceived value. It's not just the price. It's about how the price and service add together.

For this reason, it's important to know exactly why you are moving providers. Knowing why you are moving allows you to plan where you should move to. If you don't know why you need to move, you may simply replace old problems with new ones.

Choices

It's a competitive landscape and no provider should feel they have all the reasons to keep your business. There are long lists of solutions, some broad, some highly specialised. You may be able to replace one entity with 3 smaller ones, each controlling a smaller part of the overall operation. Or, you may be able to replace several third parties with one complete solution.

What is best for you depend on the goals, but also the constraints you have. Sometimes moving from one solution to several independent ones sounds more complex, but actually breeds better results. It allows you to replace a part of the operation without replacing all parts, and perhaps allows you to get the most out of each area of expertise.

Often, it's more scalable to centralise with key providers. Less independent systems mean less contacts, less custom integration needs, less contracts, and usually less headaches.

No matter your direction, you need a plan. It may take months to do independent research, attend sales calls, watch videos, play with demo accounts, test set ups... Time you likely don't have.

Direction

Our advantage is clear. We already work with multiple providers. We have run operations for clients from various industries, sizes and backgrounds. We have had to work with them daily across a large portfolio, and have learnt the hard way. Where systems can drop you into a functionality black hole.

Once we learn your goals and tally your constraints, we are in an unbiased position to help advise which direction you should take. As we work with many of these providers already, it matters little to us which you use.

You will be challenged to find many companies in our position, who have detailed experience on these topics, and can offer fair advice. We don't pretend to know all the platforms out there, but as you can imagine, the more we work with, the easier it is for us to learn a new one and compare it.